Staff Climate Notes

Climate fintech—the intersection between climate change, financial services, and digital technologies—is playing an important role in attracting more investment into climate finance by leveraging innovative technologies, thereby addressing some financing barriers. While recognizing that technology alone can only be a partial solution, the note outlines how fintech can help address financing challenges for climate investments. It also details the beneficial features of emerging financial technologies in climate finance and explores the limitations of fintech tools. In addition, the note emphasizes private sector efforts in this area, drawing on discussions with market participants, private sector, and regulatory bodies. Finally, it elicits several lessons learned and discusses potential policy implications, focusing on improving quality and accessibility of climate data, developing digital infrastructure, improving the availability of financing and the liquidity of financial instruments for climate investments, and ensuring appropriate environmental and financial regulation. Even though technology offers considerable promise for supporting climate finance, it can only partially alleviate certain barriers while carrying risks that will need to be carefully managed. Fintech should be an integral part of the overall policy solution to help address challenges in scaling up climate finance.